SARS Research Lab Loses 2,000 Tubes of Killer Virus – foul play has not been ruled out

A prestigious research institute in France said it had lost thousands of tubes of samples of the deadly Sars coronavirus.

A routine inventory check at Paris’ Pasteur Institute revealed that 2,349 tubes containing fragments of the virus responsible for the deaths of 774 people in 2002 were missing, the centre named after French chemist Louis Pasteur said.

The institute was quick to reassure the public and said that the contents of the missing vials had no infectious potential. They contained only part of the virus and had no ability to spread.

“Independent experts referred by health authorities have qualified such potential as ‘non-existing’ according to the available evidence and literature on the survival of the Sars virus,” the institute said.

In 2002 more than 8,000 people were infected by a pandemic of Sars – severe acute respiratorysyndrome. The virus spread from China through Hong Kong and on to other countries before it was eventually brought under control.

It is not clear how the tubes disappeared from one of the institute’s safest laboratories. Management were made aware of the loss in January, Le Monde newspaper reported.

For weeks, staff at the institute tried to find the missing vials, general director Christian Bréchot said.